


Scientific Method

by PrairieDawn



Series: The Not-So-Lost Years [3]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Ableism, Academia, F/M, Mentorship, Starfleet Academy, Telepathy, nature and practice of science
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 19:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30144534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: First year cadet Nen Tolou's unwillingness to confront his neurological condition can no longer be humored. His squad mates must lead him through a scientific analysis of the problem before he can even begin to solve it.
Relationships: Radar O'Reilly/Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Not-So-Lost Years [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966705
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	Scientific Method

What. Was. That. Noise? It drilled through Nen's eardrums and straight into his brain, impossible to ignore, nearly impossible to endure. Nen uncurled a little in his makeshift roost and raised his head. The noise rose in pitch and volume for a few seconds, held on a steady, whining note, then gradually died away. 

"Ow," Gnidziejko said from below him. "My poor ears." The bunk squeaked and swayed when she moved.

Alonso flicked the lights on to a chorus of groans. Nen hid his face in his feathers and wondered if this Academy was really any better than the sanitarium he had narrowly avoided. "We've got to be in our designated areas in workout clothes in twenty-nine minutes," she told them. Nen fluttered down off his bunk and blearily tried to remember his locker combination. Alonso kept talking. "Showers are for after exercise," she called after Lau. "Dress out here, facing the walls so we can pretend to have some privacy. When you're done, help each other make the beds. I'll check them when you're done."

Nen tugged on a gray pinny emblazoned with the Starfleet Academy logo in the front and his name in Standard characters on the back, glad that he wasn't being required to wear heavy, restrictive human clothing over his feathers. He tied the sides, stretching his wings to make sure they wouldn't chafe. He'd been issued boots, but they were only for hazardous environments. According to the quartermaster he was allowed to go without the rest of the time. 

He saw Gnidziejko still pulling on clothes and turned his face back into the corner until she said, "I'm decent. You make my bunk and I'll make yours. Deal?"

He whistled agreement and set to work on the bottom bunk. O'Reilly joined him to help get the sides even and the corners tight, then reached up to help Gnidziejko. Alonso walked down the aisles, peering at each bed, then as soon as she was satisfied, said "O'Reilly, you're the expert. Give them a second pass."

"Aye, Cadet Alonso," he replied a little proudly. 

"Gnidziejko, you're assigned to do PT with the other Vulcanoids," Alonso read off her datapad. "Section J3. Barrie, Lau, Olamina, and O'Reilly, the five of us are meeting at Section H5. And Naraht, Imre, Lessl, and Nen are in D2. It's a bit of a walk, so we'd better get started."

"I thought we had to stay with our buddies," Gnidziejko said, her voice carefully neutral.

"You get temporary ones if you're in a different PT group. You've got time if you want to walk him over."

"I'm fifteen, not five," Nen argued. "I can walk with the rest of my group."

"I will ensure he remains safe," Imre assured Gnidziejko before looking down at Nen. "You have short legs. We should go now if we wish to arrive on time."

Nen did not thank Imre for reminding him, yet again, that he was a burden who didn't belong like the rest of the group. He did take the time to look up where they were going on his datapad and point out the way. Once they reached the end of the row of barracks, they followed a curving sidewalk past practice fields A through C, on which cadets were clustered in groups of twenty or so. He walked on the grass rather than on the concrete paths meant for the springy soled shoes everyone but he, Lessl, and Naraht wore.

Before he had been dropped into this inconceivable life, he'd expected to have no life at all by now. It felt like he was feeling his way forward in the dark a few steps at a time, through unfamiliar territory peopled with bizarre and incomprehensible beings. He quickened his steps to keep up with Imre and Lessl and tried not to stumble, though the ground moved in ocean swells beneath his feet. Section D2 turned out to be a semicircle marked out in chalk lines on the grass surrounding the base of an observation tower, . One of the beings waiting for them looked human or nearly so, while the other was a bronze, angular being with three arms and three legs who was almost as tall as Imre.

He recognized the Pluran, Nsaan, among the motley group assembling around their instructors. There were a couple more of the copper-colored tripeds, another Kelpien like Imre, a pile of ropy, squirming tentacles like a land dwelling kaleidoscopic anemone, and a dark, craggy biped even shorter than himself. The second division, into five cadets and one instructor, left him with Naraht for company. The human instructor let loose a piercing whistle he'd not known humans could make and his group stilled and faced her, though describing them as standing at attention was a stretch.

"Your bodies all are far enough from humanoid standards to require individualized training plans. I'd like to get baselines on speed, strength, and stamina for all of you today. On each of your datapads, you will find stretching and warmup programs provided by your home cultures. Spread out and I'll come to each of you in turn."

Nen found the icon on his datapad and pulled up his exercise program, which turned out to be the exact exercise program he'd worked through with his parents and occasional guests at the cliffside lab. Captain Baxter must have gotten it off his dad when they left. The familiarity of it was comforting in all the strangeness. He set the datapad to keep time for him, taking off for a run around the track that wound around and between the D group spaces while keeping his distance from the other cadets.

Once warmed up, he stretched from the top down. His wings ached from lack of use and he let his gaze track wistfully up the observation tower while he stretched them. He could imagine few things more delightful than to climb all the way to the platform at the top, aptly enough called a crow's nest in Standard, and jump off.

He had it on very good authority that the gravity was just enough higher on Earth, the air just enough thinner, that he wouldn't be able to fly--though he likely could glide a considerable distance and land safely enough. The instructor reached him just as he lost track of his stretches and was standing there like a fool staring up into the sky. "Nen Tolou?" she asked.

"Yes, Instructor," he said.

"Cadet First Class Lydia Masalis," she informed him. She held up a harness made of lightweight, sturdy fabric with a device attached to it. "Let's get this fitted. The antigrav should sit as close as possible to your center of gravity or it will make you tip over in the air."

He was going to get to fly today, he realized with delight. "I will put it on myself," he told her, carefully taking it from her and putting it on over his shoulders, careful to smooth his body feathers and shirt fabric underneath the straps. He flapped his wings experimentally.

"I'd like to check it for fit," she said.

He stepped away from her reaching hands. "I--I am sorry. I cannot. I have a medical condition."

She took a step back. "I don't want to be responsible for what would happen if it came off while you were in the air."

"Very little would happen. I cannot gain altitude in this gravity, but I am still capable of gliding safely to the ground," he assured her. She didn't look assured.

"I'm sorry, Tolou, I cannot allow you to try to fly without making sure your harness is on correctly."

Nen let his eyes track back up the tower. He'd felt hemmed in, lost, almost claustrophobic since he arrived, the brief glimpse through the shuttlecraft window not nearly enough to give him a sense of the campus' size and layout. He wanted to fly over it. He needed to fly over it.

But if he let her straighten his harness there was a good chance he'd have another seizure and waking up in the infirmary with a migraine and that angry human doctor standing over him again didn't appeal. He supposed he could ask to have Gnidziejko come and adjust it for him, if she knew how and if Cadet (First Class) Masalis would let her do it, but it rankled that, for no reason, Gnidziejko seemed able to short circuit whatever it was made his body and brain respond so badly to the proximity of other people. It shouldn't be that way. It wouldn't be that way if he didn't persist in imagining it to be. "Of course," he said, finally, sticking out his chest and planning to count his way through her assistance.

"Hmm," she said. "I'm not going to bite you. What's going on?" Masalis asked.

"Nothing," he said, wincing at the brazen lie and looking up at the tower again to convince himself it was justified.

She stepped inside his personal space, bringing a whirling, multicolored storm with her--he meant, he imagined that she was bringing flame and wind and battering noise with her. It wasn't real. It made no difference to him in reality and the pulsing, spinning brightness working its way from the edges of his vision to the center was nothing at all.

He barely felt himself hitting the ground.

*

Sofie kept her strides confident on her way to the section designated for Vulcanoid species. She found herself simultaneously worried and excited. There hadn't been a whole lot of opportunity for her to meet others of her mother's species, but on the other hand, the reason for that was her mother's species lack of respect for her father's people. She had a sinking feeling that she would not meet expectations and that they would be sure to let her know as much. _I am enough as I am_ , she told herself, _and if they don't see that it's their problem, not mine._ Now if she only believed it.

She was one of the first to arrive, the few others already arranging themselves into neat rows and beginning to stretch. Sofie took the next available space in the array, fortunately not at the front, and copied the woman in front of her. The group, twelve in all, filled in relatively quickly. Their instructor, a severe-looking Vulcan man with the slightest touch of silver in his hair--did that make him a hundred or more?-- stood at parade rest, facing all of them, his roving eyes assessing their every movement and likely their every expression.

"Attention," he said quietly, and everyone halted and assumed the same pose as he did. "You may address me as Instructor Tesiv. We will be working through the basic forms of maintenance exercise first, then your current physical fitness will be assessed. A program will be designed to ensure each of you has reached maximal physical effectiveness by the end of the summer."

He led them through a series of movements, some of which were unfamiliar to Sofie, so that she had to watch closely to mimic them, and if Tesiv's intense focus on her were any indication, she was likely doing them incorrectly. A few of the positions she simply could not attain, presumably because the "real" Vulcans in the group had been trained to them from childhood, or possibly because her half-Vulcan body had slightly different mechanics. She occupied herself going over what little comparative anatomy she knew. Human shoulders and hips were naturally a little more flexible than Vulcan ones, but Vulcan spines were more flexible than human.

They finished their stretches and Tesiv approached her. "You are the one raised on Earth, correct?"

"Yes, Instructor Tesiv," she replied.

"Your physical conditioning is inadequate. You will commit to additional practice with the forms daily, and you will perform them for me until they are satisfactory."

"Yes, Instructor," she said because there was nothing else she could say.

"Three laps around the cross country path is equivalent to a five-point-two kilometer run. Commence immediately. An acceptable completion time for today is eighteen minutes."

A run would give her some time to clear her head. She also suspected running would be an area in which she might excel. She settled into a solid pace that would have her finishing in sixteen minutes and used the time to get a little light meditation in.

When she finished, second out of twelve she noted with a little satisfaction, Tesiv was waiting for her. _What now?_ She thought uncharitably, though his lack of expression was probably not the condemnation she assumed it to be. 

"A moment," he said.

She stopped to face him. "Yes, Instructor Tesiv?"

"Your presence has been requested in Section D2. A medical emergency of some kind." 

"Is there further information?"

"Only that you are to be released immediately."

She nodded acknowledgment and headed for D2 at a loping run, given she was warmed up already. She arrived in less than a minute to find Tolou on the ground again and Naraht rumbling up the path leading from their barracks with her medkit perched on top of him.

The instructor was kneeling beside Tolou, looking stunned. She took the woman's arm and led her a couple of meters away with a, "Sit down, you're all wobbly," then jogged up to Naraht to collect her kit before returning to her patient.

This had to stop, she thought while letting the portable scanner take a reading. One of these times he just wasn't going to wake up after and he was leaving collateral damage in his wake. She loaded a hypo of pentobarbitol and pressed it to his throat, focusing on her shield to avoid catching the terrifying sensations he was enduring, but would forget entirely by the time he woke, along with whatever he was doing that got him into this particular mess in the first place. 

She waited until Tolou's heart rate slowed back into a normal range and his neuroscan settled into the long, slow peaks of deep unconsciousness before calling the instructor over. "You okay?"

"What happened?" she asked.

"Psychic decompensation. He's making a habit of it. Mind if I take a scan?" She mimed waving the scanner over the instructor.

"Sure, but why? I'm not the one who passed out."

Sofie passed the scanner over the instructor. "I bet you're queasy, though. Bit of a headache?" The instructor shrugged. She checked the scan and didn't see anything that wouldn't resolve on its own. "You look all right, though a neurostabilizer wouldn't hurt. What's your name so I can look you up?"

"Lydia Masalis."

She tapped in the name. Full human, no listed drug allergies. "Can I give you an analgesic and a neurostabilizer?"

"Okay," she said, still looking a little unfocused.

"I sent my contact information to your datapad. If you're still feeling off by this evening, send me a note, all right?"

Masalis blinked at her for another few seconds but answered before Sofie changed her mind about leaving her to her own devices. "Yeah, okay, I'll do that."

Sofie took a moment to set a reminder to check in with her before lights out. "Good." She scooped Tolou into her arms and extended her shield over him, a relatively simple matter given he was out like a light. The other instructor for the group was standing nearby, keeping the rest of the cadets from getting too close. Sofie addressed him next. "Keep an eye on Masalis. She took a minor psionic hit from Tolou when he went down. Use the same protocols you would for a suspected mild concussion."

The Edoan asked sharply, "And where are you taking him?"

"Back to the barracks. A staff physician is meeting me down there."

"Should we expect him back tomorrow?"

"Maybe. If I can pry his head out of his ass by then." Oh, maybe not the right tone. "Sir."

"Understood."

Sofie wondered if he had chosen to ignore her language or hadn't understood it. On the chance that he'd figure it out, she walked briskly away from the group, still cradling the unconscious Tolou.

*

Nen woke propped up with pillows and blankets, rather than lying flat the way he had been in the hospital. There were voices speaking quietly nearby. He blinked his eyes open and shut them again immediately against the sunlight pouring in the windows.

"Wake up, kid," a gravelly human voice said. Not a cadet. Familiar. He forced his eyes open to see the doctor from the 'fleet hospital. A scanner whirred near his head. "You'll live, this time. But this is your last shot. Unless Cadet Gnidziejko convinces me otherwise, I'm admitting you to the unit tonight." He turned to Gnidziejko. "Don't let him out of your sight."

"Yes, Doctor," she told him.

He sighed heavily. "Let me clarify that. I don't want you to burn yourself out either. Tag team with O'Reilly and I want updates at 0900, 1200, 1500, and 1800 hours."

"I don't need--"

The doctor's glare told him he really shouldn't finish that sentence. "You put in some effort and I will vouch for you, even if I end up having to admit you. Give Gnidziejko hell and you'll be looking at a medical discharge."

Nen bobbed his head in acknowledgment. The doctor grabbed his bag and left him alone with his keeper.

Gnidziejko handed him a bottle of fruit juice and a packet of some kind of nut. "I'm not going to ask what got into you, because I'm pretty sure you don't know."

"I was looking up at the tower. I wanted to fly." That was the last thing he remembered.

She nodded, seeming to accept his answer. "I promised I'd listen. We've got the morning before we have to meet the rest of the squad for lunch. Talk to me, please."

He took a long drink. "I have a disease that causes me to perceive things that are not there. Sounds. Sensations. The ground moves under my feet. My brain invents these sensations when I am near other people. The people here--the Federation people--believe in dangerous, false stories. Gods. Powers. Myths. They tell me that what happens in my brain is real, that in some way I am connected to other brains, even though that is impossible. You believe these inventions, too."

"How do you know they're invented?"

He turned her question back to her. "How do you know they're not?"

"Consistent, actionable information gathered over most of my life. I'd as soon doubt my eyes and ears. You sense magnetic fields. I can't do that. How should I know you're not making that up?" She chewed her lip. Small white teeth. Mammal teeth. Strange.

"Magnetic fields are measurable by instruments," he said.

She nodded. "Granted. Though psionic fields are, too, if you know how to look. So, what if you approached the problem like a scientist. You have observational data that doesn't fit your theory, and you have other intelligent people offering alternate hypotheses. What would you need to do first?"

"Observe without interpreting." To do that, he would have to stop trying to ignore the hallucinations. What if that only made them worse?

She bobbed her head in approval. "Good. And next?"

"Propose explanations," he recited, though he was still hung up on observing.

"In Standard, we might say formulate hypotheses. And then?"

"Design tests to determine the likelihood of each hypothesis."

She waved a hand in front of her in a noncommittal wobble. "A little Bayesian, but you have the basic idea. And then?"

"Examine the results of the test, draw conclusions, and build upon them to expand the explanations."

"OK, so you've got a basic grasp of the scientific method, at least the way humans describe it," she said. "That's good, we have a common framework."

"How does one test hypotheses that rely entirely on subjective data?"

"Well, partly by not relying on the subjective data. Double-blind experiments. And I've got a portable neuroscanner that can give real-time data on brain function."

"Which could be calibrated to support your delusion," he argued back.

She blew her breath out through pursed lips. "It's 0700 now. Take an hour to write down every observation you can think of, then start working on hypotheses to test."

"What are you going to do?"

"Sit over here and memorize the notes for the class we're both missing, then write some emails."

"You're allowed to use your datapad for emails?"

"Only to Starfleet Medical and the Academy clinic. I promise it's nothing recreational." She stood but stopped herself before walking away. "Do your people meditate?"

"You mean attempting to reach a mythical higher plane of existence by thinking about it?"

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "No, I mean training your brain to understand and control itself better by practicing awareness and focus."

"It is an excuse to daydream and invites irrational thinking."

"I'd tell you the most logical species in the Federation relies on meditation to regulate their emotions, but I know what you think of Vulcans."

He clicked derisively. "You mean that they are mystics that only pretend at logic?"

A puff of breath escaped her, a human laugh. She brought it under control. "I'm not sure you're wrong. For now, let's just work on the hypothesis testing. We'll tackle applications when we've laid some groundwork."

She left him on her bunk, crossing the room to the table. He closed his eyes to sulk, or if he was lucky to sleep some more. "Fifteen minutes of honest effort, Tolou," Gnidziejko said, then looked back down at her own work.

Nen shook out his wings and grabbed his datapad to put in his fifteen minutes of entertaining fantasy, trying to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach telling him he was betraying everything he'd ever been taught to believe.


End file.
